Grant Co. to lengthen two rural canal bridges

EPHRATA — Grant County is looking to extend a pair of wooden bridges over the East Low Canal this year, allowing the East Columbia Basin Irrigation District to finish widening the canal, according to Grant County Commissioner Danny Stone.

“Every bridge that’s not fixed (through widening to work with the new canal width) is a choke point,” Stone said.

The two bridges — one north of Warden on Road W SE near the intersection of Road 2 SE not far from the settlement of the Warden Hutterian Brethren, and the second on Road 11 SE several miles southwest of Warden — allow county-maintained gravel roads to cross the canal.

However, replacing the bridges would cost an estimated $4.4 million, according to Grant County Engineer David Bren. So rather than tear them down, the county is looking at a much less expensive option — removing a portion of the bridge on the side to be widened, and then adding to the bridge when the irrigation district has finished widening the canal.

The estimated cost of widening both bridges, according to Bren, would be about $500,000.

“All you do is take the existing bridge, and then you add to it,” he said. “The best thing to do is the simplest thing, and we’re trying to make that happen this year.”

Bren said the work can be done by county work crews, and once a portion of the bridges are removed, they will be covered with a temporary steel bridge that county road crews already know how to operate. The county is currently working with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — which actually owns the East Low Canal — on timing and extra parts for the temporary bridges, Bren said, but if it happens this year, the county will have to act before the ECBID and the bureau begin to fill the canal in late March for irrigation.

If all goes according to plan, the ECBID will likely widen the canal in the fall, when the irrigation season ends. Only then would the county move in to finish widening the bridges, Bren said.

“These bridges are in absolutely fabulous shape, and it’s hard to justify tearing them out,” he said.

The East Columbia Basin Irrigation District widened the canal to 120 feet from 90 feet several years ago in order to increase the amount of water the canal can carry as part of the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Project, which is providing for the construction of a number of small tributary water distribution systems, giving farmers on an additional 90,000 acres currently irrigated by deep wells.

However, because of the wooden bridges — two in Grant County, and eight in Adams County — the ECBID was unable to widen a portion of the canal under the bridges.

Brent said while the roads are in sparsely populated areas and little used, they are important roads for farm traffic during planting and harvest seasons, and that in the case of the Road W bridge, the detour around the bridge if it were to be rebuilt would be nearly 10 miles.

Stone said Grant County is seeking some targeted federal funding in the form of earmarks to help pay the cost of lengthening the bridges. However, Grant County will still need to provide a roughly 20% match, he said.

“We believe we can do that, and solve this problem in a less expensive way,” Stone said. “It’s the wisest thing for us and for taxpayer dollars.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.